Merry Christmas!

GILROY GARDENS: ILLUMINATIONS

We finally went to see the Illuminations exhibit at Gilroy Gardens this weekend and it was amazing!

There was a threat of rain so the park was almost empty - 20 cars in the parking lot and we had the place to ourselves!

 The years we were born - of course Jared and Harper share the same one!

 There was a little market place of handmade arts. The above is paintings all done with parts of his hand!

SAN JOSE HISTORY PARK

Every Christmas we have an Activity Advent Calendar and a new activity we added this year was to go to a Children's Holiday Festival at the San Jose History Park.

I had only ever visited the park during the week when most of the building are closed so it was fun to not only go when they were open but when they had such a fun event for kids too!

 They got to try their hand at the railroad car.

 There's a mini trolly for the kids to play on.

 They had a blacksmith making things.

 I thought this was pretty cool - they had a printing shop where they showed us how old letter presses worked and Aubrey had a try!

 One of my favorite areas is this old Candy shop.

 You can ride the trolly around the little town and learn some facts and history.

This trolly is double ended so when they reach the end of the track they slide the backs of the seats forward and the whole car can then face in the right direction!

 There was a bean bag toss and the kids got to keep these handmade bean bags!

 There were many crafts like the above snowglobe as well as tree ornaments, dolls and greenery arrangements.

I thought it was a lot of fun with plenty to do!